Chaos Zero Nightmare Speedrunning Guide: Optimal routes and time-savers

Speedrunning Chaos Zero Nightmare is about minimising combat and decision time per Chaos run while still hitting key rewards: you route for fast battles, skip low‑value nodes, and reset bad starts instead of forcing scuffed runs. With the right teams and pathing rules, you can clear weekly Chaos/Seasonal goals in under an hour instead of grinding slow, full‑clear runs.​

Core speedrun philosophy

• Focus on clear speed, not perfect value
  • High‑level guides emphasise that once you’ve unlocked sufficient Chaos/Zero difficulty, you should prioritise fast clears over squeezing every Epiphany or event, especially for weekly missions.​
  • Speedroutes cut unnecessary fights and long events while still getting enough Save Data and Chaos points to progress.​
• Reset aggressively
  • Rerolling early is standard: some creators recommend “if it doesn’t dupe by the first boss, it’s a dead run—redo and save time and sanity.”​
  • Bad Epiphanies, terrible early card RNG, or slow maps are reset conditions, not endurance tests.​​

Think of Chaos as a roguelike where your time is the hard currency; you only finish runs that meet your speed/quality threshold.

Optimal routing: how to move on the map

Speedroutes follow consistent tile priority rules instead of “full clears.”

• Node priority for fast Chaos/Zero runs
  • For general Chaos progression, a common advice pattern is:
    • Target ? nodes (events) and waypoints, while minimising attack nodes before the boss.​​
    • Pick routes that reach the waypoint with the fewest mandatory battles, only taking elites if your team steamrolls them.​
  • Some players prefer no‑elite routes for speed; others include elites only when they’re trivial and on the way.​​
• Why waypoints matter
  • Waypoints are critical landmarks:
    • Reaching one means you’re “far enough in” that restarting is more painful, so many speedrunners use it as a mental commit point.​
    • Only after the waypoint can you roll Dimensional Tunnels, which can skip large chunks of the map.​
• Handling Dimensional / Forbidden Tunnels
  • Dimensional/Forbidden tunnels are high‑variance time‑savers: they can teleport you near the boss or into new sections.​
  • However, for Seasonal Chaos weekly points, at least one guide warns that entering the Dimensional Tunnel without clearing its fight can wipe your progress, so only use it when you know you’ll finish the tunnel battle.​

Routing rule: maximise ? + waypoints, minimise fights, and use tunnels only when they clearly shortcut to the boss with manageable fights.

Fast team setups and combat time‑savers

• Build for fast wipes, not safety
  • Speed‑oriented farming guides highlight “ungabunga” setups—e.g., zero‑brain nuke builds or bullet spam—that delete waves quickly at the cost of some consistency.​
  • Seasonal and boss farming videos demonstrate 1‑turn or 2‑turn kill builds (Mei Lin nukes, Luke bullet spam, Haru carries, Veronica/Mika/Tressa synergies) specifically to reset fights in seconds.​
• Minimise animation and decision overhead
  • Prefer cards and ultimates with short animations for your spam builds; long cinematic skills eat time even if they’re strong.​
  • Use straightforward, low‑AP combos that you can execute quickly without deep hand evaluation each turn.​​
• Use manual, not auto, for Chaos
  • Auto is disabled in Chaos and widely considered inefficient, so speedrunning is manual by design; any “auto‑friendly” build is better used in Simulations/normal farming.​​

A speedrun team is essentially a low‑thinking, high‑burst comp tuned to the Chaos difficulty you’re farming.

Chaos / Zero System specific speed tech

• Reroll tiers and codex choices
  • For Zero System, creators recommend rerolling until you get high‑tier codex (e.g., tier 12–13) and then restarting runs that don’t “dupe” good cards by the first boss.​
  • This front‑loads strong decks so Floor 2 flies by, turning full clears into short, consistent speedruns instead of grindy slogs.​
• Limit card bloat and neutral cards
  • Advanced Chaos guides suggest deleting ally cards and avoiding Neutral cards that don’t support your main combo, to keep the deck tight and fast.​​
  • Fewer, more focused cards = quicker decisions, higher chance of drawing your wincon early in each fight.​
• Seasonal Chaos routing
  • For Seasonal Chaos weeklies, farming guides show paths that hit the maximum question marks for event points while keeping battles minimal, finishing the 8,000‑point weekly in under 30 minutes if done properly.​

Speedrunning Zero/Seasonal Chaos is mostly about tight decks, aggressive rerolls, and smart tile selection, not about pushing one impossible difficulty.

Daily time‑savers outside Chaos

• Fast stamina spending routes
  • A dedicated “fastest build for spending stamina” guide recommends specific daily farming setups (e.g., Maneuvering Fire cores) so you can dump Aether quickly without micro‑managing difficult fights.​
• Unlock Zero System early for better time value
  • Progression guides strongly advise hitting Captain 40 ASAP to unlock Zero System, then “put most of your playtime and stamina” there, because it replaces older Chaos as the most time‑efficient long‑term content.​

In short: speedrunning Chaos Zero Nightmare is about high‑damage, low‑cognitive‑load teams + greedy but controlled routing + hard reset discipline. With those habits, both regular Chaos and Zero/Seasonal Chaos become fast, repeatable loops instead of hour‑long marathons.